


The Decision

by Miri Cleo (miri_cleo)



Category: The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Genre: Gen, yuletide2010
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-22
Updated: 2010-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-13 23:02:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miri_cleo/pseuds/Miri%20Cleo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Man's wife makes her decision; this is a piece featuring her voice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Decision

**Author's Note:**

  * For [murielle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/murielle/gifts).



> Warning: I'm not even sure how to warn or what to warn for. This is very much in keeping with the book...
> 
> I really hope you like it!

The obsidian might have gleamed in the moonlight had there been any for it to catch. But there had not been moonlight. There had not been moonlight in years. She could remember the way it looked in his hair. It would have looked that way in the boy's hair too.

Across from her, the flames had made his tears glisten. Her bravado had been for herself. She did care, but she could not have let that stop her. Her own tears had ceased. It was not true that she did not dream.

She dreamt of green fields and yellow moonlight, and she dreamt of the way it was supposed to light the boy's face. She dreamt in misery, and to wake in tears was too much a comfort. She had become too selfish to weep for him. That is what he might grow up thinking.

But it was better that way. The boy would grow if he grew at all with no sorrow that was hers. Better not to weep.

She did not think of his future because it was nothing but ash. His breaths would be ash and she could only hope his body would one day be the same. But she could not truly hope for anything anymore.

 

That night she did not go to the window to watch by his side.

It's coming, she said calmly. There was nothing more sure in that moment than that.  
Now?  
Yes, now. It's coming.

His eyes had been wild, lighted with something other than the drycell lamp and the distant, merciless glow of the world on fire. She clutched her belly and carefully turned to the bed. Her legs were slick from the water that had rushed down them when it had broken. She stepped carefully so as not to slip on her cold, wet feet.

She knew the moment he stopped living for her or for himself. He did not notice her silence, and the boy's cry was the only one she would hear like it again.

She had nothing left ti give.

 

She followed him on the legs of a newborn calf. They had waited as long as they could. The cold was already sinking in, and the darkness had long come. She felt begrudgingly compelled to follow instead of hope. She felt love so overwhelming that she hated him for letting them take another chocking breath outside the already cramped comfort of their bedroom.

The bedclothes stank of life and ruin. They left them behind.

 

She walked not minding the feel of the earth beneath her feet. She knew road and she knew bush, but that did not matter now. For the boy's sake, he would not come to look for her. She was alone with the sound of her breaths, taking in the ash that began to fall around her shoulders. Snow used to fall, to catch in her hair. He thought she looked beautiful that way.

She had not seen her own face in some time. There was no beauty in the world. Not even in her son. Her legs were numb with cold. They had been numb with cold since the day they left and had grown only colder.

Her body was numb with the impending nothingness.

 

She kept her voice low as she spoke over the body of the sleeping child. He was so frail that he might have been a corpse. There were nights she woke and though she could not see him, she knew he held his ear to the boy's chest, listening. She did not listen.

Where will we go?  
South.  
There is nothing South. Nothing. There is nothing anymore.

He watched her with sad, caring eyes.

What will we eat?  
We will eat what we can find.  
And if there is nothing to find?  
There will be something to find.  
We have nothing. Nothing.

He looked down to the boy. He was awake now and he stared up at them with wide, dry eyes. She looked away.

We stayed as long as we could, he said.  
And now we have survived as long as we can.

 

He taught her how to do it on an afternoon that seemed warmer than the rest. She had been ready then. Her hands were steady. He said she had steady hands.

 

In the grey or what might have been morning or mid day, she woke to the boy watching her. His eyes were neither bright nor hollow. He saw the world as he had been born to it. He had no fraying memories of before to cling to for comfort. He clung to his father.

She no longer clung to anything. She wanted to seize him then and hold him to her breast. She wanted to tell him of the sunshine and the high oak trees that had branches so thick that the ground remained hard packed and cool underneath them.

She wanted to tell him about wild strawberries and fresh linens being taken down. She wanted to slowly give him her every memory of warmth, every one she would not allow herself to use up. She wanted them to have them, to warm him as she pushed the breath out of him. He deserved sunshine and warmth over cold and ash.

She could give him nothingness but for his father. In nothingness, there was not this. There was no fear of slavery or worse. There was no gnawing pain of hunger.

There was no warmth either.

She grew not to regret that. But she kept all of that inside of her, eating away at her as her hunger did.

 

The dead, gnarled root of a tree caught her foot. She let herself fall, cradling one hand to her body. The obsidian cut it, and she did not try to protect herself from the rest. She was protecting herself from all, just as she was protecting them from her.

The boy had not needed her to say goodbye. She knew that more than his father did. She had said her goodbyes to him the moment his body parted from hers. Now there was nothing more, nothing less. It would be harder for his father, harder for both of them. She had long resolved to blackness.


End file.
